HONOLULU – To fend off a catastrophic energy crisis that could start at any moment, “We should do everything we can to destroy oil’s monopoly,” former Director of Central Intelligence R. James Woolsey told the Blue Planet Foundation’s 2008 Summit here.

In a keynote address, Woolsey, who was CIA director in 1993-1995, warned that the sparks that could set off a global energy disaster are everywhere, but especially in the Middle East. Iran has made a “close to explicit” threat of attacking Israel with nuclear weapons, Woolsey told his audience of mostly scientific and public policy experts. Also, Woolsey said, the stability of the world’s most important oil-producing nation, Saudi Arabia, is at risk because the Saudi Wahhabis hold the same extremist positions as Osama bin Laden, and there’s a fight underway over who’s going to be number one. Asked whether Saudi Arabia has hit “peak oil” (the point at which its production can go no higher), Woolsey answered, “Whether or not they can (go higher), they won’t.”

On top of all this, Woolsey emphasized, “We’re on the verge of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East” pitting Sunni against Shiite Muslims.

Calling radical Islamism one of two overarching problems of the 21st century, Woolsey said the other was climate change, likening the planet to a smoker who goes through five packs a day. Standing in the way of solving both these problems, Woolsey went on, is oil’s “stranglehold” on transportation fuel. “We must strike substantial body blows against oil,” he said. “We must destroy its strategic position.”

Woolsey, who is now an alternative energy venture capitalist, said the way to break oil’s stranglehold is with plug-in hybrid electric vehicles, which are cars and trucks that, instead of running on gasoline, run primarily on electricity supplied through an ordinary electrical outlet. As he has before, Woolsey called for sweeping governmental changes that would encourage the rapid introduction of millions of plug-in vehicles, effectively shortening the decade or longer amount of time it takes to turn over a developed nation’s fleet of motors vehicles.

Tomorrow, April 16 – Nobel prize-winning environmentalist Stephen Schneider on world’s “rotten” values, and what a Russian privately told him